I spotted this today and couldnt resist talking about it. I was reading Eric Burke's comic look at typical product masters and looking inwardly at our own products. Most of the 'Walk up and use' products are things like the iPod, the toaster and other.

Avoiding the 'me too' scenario is going against the grain in many places. For SQL Developer, we have tried to keep the amount of functionality exposed as clear and simple as possible.

In 2.1 we have pushed a lot of the added functionality down into menus which do not need to be used all the time. We have simplified the number of dockables that we start and made a lot of the basic functionality of the navigator, worksheet and data management much cleaner and simpler.

We're getting ready to cut a release candidate so you should check it out for yourself.